Presently, vehicles built off of truck platforms, where the truck bed is enclosed and in communication with the passenger compartment, enjoy an increasing popularity. This type of vehicle, typically referred to as a sport utility vehicle, has a rear door commonly known as a "liftgate" articulated around a horizontal shaft at the top rear of the vehicle. The liftgate provides a means to access the rear storage area of the vehicle. A rear window or "flipglass" is a common feature of the liftgate and provides access to the rear storage area without having to raise the liftgate. The liftgate flipglass is mounted to the liftgate and articulated around a pair of externally visible hinges.
The flipglass hinges are undesirable for two reasons. First, from a vehicle styling standpoint, the hinges are considered aesthetically unappealing and a styling limitation due to their external placement. Second, from a manufacturing standpoint, there is a set of hinges for the liftgate and a separate set of hinges for the liftgate flipglass. Such redundancy increases overall vehicle cost and complexity.
One design for a hatchback-type rear door provides a pivotable door subassembly that has an independently pivoting window subassembly that either remains in place when the door is opened or may be opened in unison with the door. Although the door and window subassemblies share a common pivot hinge axis, thereby reducing overall vehicle cost and complexity, such an embodiment would be undesirable for a sport utility vehicle. More specifically, the access to the rear storage area would require lifting the tailgate and either leaving the glass in place or lifting the glass with the tailgate. Either mode of access would require raising the liftgate, which would defeat the purpose for having a flipglass feature. The purpose being that raising the liftgate to gain access to the rear storage area may be bypassed by utilizing the flipglass feature. Such a feature is desired when placing a small load in the rear storage area for example.
What is desired than is a rear door assembly having a liftgate with a liftgate flipglass feature having a common hinge axis therebetween, which allows the flipglass to be opened while the liftgate remains in place or allows both liftgate and flipglass to be opened. Such a door assembly would provide access to the rear storage area while improving vehicle styling flexibility and reducing overall vehicle cost and complexity by eliminating the independent flipglass hinges.